Today is my birthday, and I’d like to give back some of the love that I receive in bunches and bunches all year long from my family, friends and clients.

So here’s something from me to you (and to your family, friends, and clients)!

I’m giving away a full session of one of my upcoming Signing Babies classes in Vancouver, Richmond, or West Vancouver, B.C. -a 6-8 week session of classes, worth up to $130. Here’s the schedule of classes the lucky Vancouver-area family will choose from. The winner will pick one full session of classes at any location.

To enter, comment below on this blog post, or hop on over to my Signing Babies Facebook page and comment on today’s contest post (you can enter once by blog, and once by Facebook, with bonus points for liking both pages).

Please spread the love and share this giveaway.

I will be picking randomly from the entries received before midnight on August 4th, 2014.

IMPORTANT CONTEST DETAILS: Winning family must have a baby aged 0-36 months and be able to attend a scheduled Signing Babies class in the Vancouver area within the assigned class dates. Private & drop in classes are excluded from this giveaway. Families with twins aged 0-24 months are eligible. Winning family will be announced on August 5th here and on Facebook.

Part of the greatness of visiting friends who have already lived in Avignon for a year is learning all about the local French culture. Our friends, a family of four, jumped into life in France with all 8 feet!

In the short week we’ve joined them, they have demonstrated how decisions about where to go, what to do, and what to eat in France are based on what is nearby, what is available, and what is fresh. As a rule, the French eat fruits and vegetables that are grown locally and in season. Period. Imported produce is bought very reluctantly by locals. If it’s not apple season in France, you don’t buy apples. And if you aren’t sure what’s in season, you’ll realize soon enough when you see the price of imported apples next to the local apricots.

In the city Avignon, there is Les Halles market that is open most days selling fresh produce, meat, dairy, and fish, which we visited soon after arriving here. And once a week on Thursdays, just outside the city walls across the bridge there is a weekly outdoor market in Villeneuve-Lez-Avignon, a small town originally built as a fortress to protect access to the bridge to Avignon.
We strolled over to Villeneuve-Lez-Avignon’s market day, our cloth shopping bags in hand. It’s a large, lively outdoor market, with food as well as goods and clothing.
The booths were dazzling and the smells were out of this world -how do I describe the olives stall?! It took my breath away and my feet instinctively stopped dead as I just breathed in the pungent scent of freshly picked olives of every size and colour. Handcrafted tapenades and olive-based spreads were also tickling my nose. It was heaven for an olive lover like me, and soon my two olive-loving kids doubled back to see what I was staring at.
It was so great to be able to eat some of the local olives we had seen growing in the groves we had passed by in our daily excursions to Tavel and Orange this week. We enthusiastically bought a few assorted kinds of green and black olives and started to munch right away. We chomped as we strolled the market and bought incredibly fresh, local produce for our last homemade dinner with our friends in Avignon before leaving the next day for Cannes.

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We took the kids out of school 2 weeks early before summer break, but luckily every day is a history lesson in Europe. Today’s lesson was two thousand years old -a bigger than life hands-on exploration of Roman life at La Théâtre Antique d’Orange. This open air theater was built early in the first century AD during the reign of Augustus in the French town of Orange, which had been a Roman colony called Arausio at the time.

We visited the theatre during the intense summer afternoon heat, but my kids were still enthralled with the massive building. Walking into the theatre, our jaws dropped as we looked up, up, up at the stone wall which stands guard behind the enormous stage, both still original.
You can see the statue of Emperor Augustus, and remnants of columns, niches, and porticos here, which have been periodically restored or replaced during its 2000 year lifespan (you can just imagine the various traumas that would fall on such a prominent building over that time period, including many wars about religion, politics and the shifting beliefs around public gathering and entertainment). Performers would enter the stage from the many niches, balconies, and doorways.

Let’s talk numbers here because the sheer size of this theatre is incredible: the wall is 121 feet high and the stage is 338 feet long. Basically the Romans built a 12 story structure by hand with a massive stage and seating for 7,000-9,000 people. Sitting in the seats, we could almost picture actors, dancers and jugglers performing for the thousands of spectators crowded onto the tiered seats. I’ve never seen anything like it!

The 12 story wall allows fantastic acoustics to this day, and the Théâtre d’Orange remarkably still holds performances. In fact, as we toured it, there were workers setting up cables and equipment for an upcoming festival. You can just see the tiny people setting up way down there!

We followed the audio tour to learn about the back and forth history of the theatre. My 8 year old looks bored, but he’s actually holding the audio pod as close to his ear as possible. He listened to every word and kept getting left behind as he clicked the buttons for additional information at each station.

The audio tour was included with entry, and you just followed the commentary as you walked and climbed to the different vantage points around the theatre at your own pace. We absolutely loved the tour, even in the heat, and it was really something to stand within the walls of something so historic and old!

Apparently, shows in Roman times could last 24 hours, or even days. Because of this, the theatre had small cavelike niches within the back hallways behind the seats for spectators to go and get out of the heat. We did the same!
Our timing wasn’t right to actually attend a concert, but I recommend looking into the performance schedule if you ever travel to this area. Here’s a photo from the theatre’s website of a recent performance showing just how huge it all is:

Today, the Roman Theatre of Orange is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage historic site. There’s lots more fascinating information about this theatre for all you history buffs, as you can imagine Europe’s largest remaining Roman monument would have, but I’ll let you click away at your leisure. For us, it was a great history lesson and adventure that I’m fairly certain our family won’t forget.

During their daily explorations while their children were at school, our friends discovered the town of Tavel (ta-velle), about a 35 minute drive north-west of Avignon. Favoured by the Sun-King Louis XIV and praised by Balzac, Mistral, and even Hemingway, Tavel is well-known for making France’s most famous rosé.

“Tavel wines are made predominantly from the Grenache, Syrah and Clairette varieties and are intended to be drunk chilled, as a more complex alternative to white wines during the hot summer months. The hot, dry Mediterranean climate means that the grapes have no difficulty in reaching full phenolic ripeness here.”

So, on a very hot, dry Mediterranean-style day, we went to visit the Tavel winery Château La Genestière Saint-Anthelme, which had originally been a silk farm on a beautiful plot of grape-growing gorgeousness. We toured the wine-making facilities, seeing where the grapes came through the chute from above and walking through the pressing area, which is completely chilled to maintain the fresh aromas and flavours of the grapes.

Then the kids were shooed outside to play while the adults tested a few wines. We did a tasting of their reds, whites, and rosés, which were all so delightful, but we happily chose to buy a case of a Tavel rosé due to the scorching South of France weather. The rosés were incredibly refreshing here, and locally grown and made –Louis XIV knew his stuff!

Off to lunch in the little town of Tavel, where we walked by beautiful old homes surrounded by narrow streets. We passed by the town centre’s washing pool, dating back to the 1300’s, where people would come to wash clothes.
Indeed, someone’s freshly washed rugs, no doubt too large to hang at home, were hanging to dry on the adjacent stone walls behind the pool:
Through the gate beyond those walls was a huge community garden. A waterway to irrigate the gardens flows down along the stone path between the garden plots, and many plots of young tomatoes, lavender, onions and other vegetables were set up to grow:
Lunch was at a little restaurant our friends had discovered in the middle of Tavel called Le Philosyph, run solely by Stéphane and Edwige, the chef and the maître d, respectively. The food was unbelievable –oh, la, la! A simple plate of canard avec sauce au poivre, des carrots, et des pommes de terre rôti, roasted duck with pepper sauce, carrots and potatoes, but made with love by a chef following his passion. It was absolutely the most delicious duck I have ever tasted.
Let’s just say, every one of us wanted to lick the plate, except maybe Ian, who has a smaller appetite than the rest of us, but dad was happy to help him finish the few last bites on his plate.

What a day! We got to take an insider’s tour of the highlights of a quaint town bearing beautiful wines and foods, with a little history thrown in there, too. Both the winery and restaurant in Tavel are must-sees on our list of to do’s around Avignon.

And in case it wasn’t completely clear, Scott and I are now officially rosé-lovers.

To sign PINK in American Sign Language, with one hand in the letter “P” handshape –thumb tucked in between extended index and middle fingers– drag the tip of the middle finger down across the lips twice.

For more about Tavel, here’s a quick New York Times article of a wine retailer’s family visit during wine harvesting time.

To throw in a little excitement for the kids (both big and small) during our week in Avignon, we spent an afternoon at the Musée d’Haribo, a candy museum in the nearby town of Uzès. A whole afternoon? At a candy museum? Mais, oui!
Our friends had visited the museum several times, and recommended it highly for a little sweet tooth fix, and some history, too, of course. Haribo has European roots with factories worldwide. It specializes in making gummy candies of all kinds and shapes, like bears and coke bottles, and began gaining fame after World War I making licorice candies. Licorice is not my thing, but I loooove gummies, and I used to buy the wrapped Maoam chewy candies (pictured below) all the time when I was a kid. I had no idea they had such a long, rich, European background.
The man behind Haribo, Hans Riedel, originally came from the town of Bonne, and so created the name of his candy company from the first two letters of his name HA (Hans) RI (Riedel) BO (Bonne) –Haribo!
My kids loved the interactive games area where they had to add up the weight totals of different kinds of candy to determine a delivery, and spin the marshmallows tub with one arm in time with the syrup pouring with the other. The museum was unlike any I’d ever seen, and I had moments of feeling like I was in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory at times, with oversized installations of gummies and technicolor displays of Haribo’s incredible repertoire of candy.
Although there are Haribo factories all over the world, including North America, apparently the best Haribo candies are made in the European factories. We got to walk through both buildings at the Provence musée -one for display of how the candy was created, and one factory building where certain types of Haribo candies were made. The last place we visited at the Musée d’Haribo was, of course, the gift shop!
More candy then I’ve ever seen before, and people were piling it into boxes the size of grocery store baskets. The fever to buy candy was contagious, and although our kids don’t buy or eat candy regularly at home, we decided to join the locals and throw some coke bottles, gummy bears, and sour cherries into a box and call it a day (in France).

To sign CANDY in American Sign Language, twist the tip of your index finger on your cheek:

Our week in Avignon was not long enough! Our friends had several trips planned for us, and we were awed by each of them. But our first morning in Avignon had us walking the narrow cobbled streets within the walled city to go to Les Halles -the covered market.

It was necessary to get there before it closed at 1pm because it was not open the next day, and the ability to locate any fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, and cheeses would be scarce otherwise. Our bodies were still acclimatizing to the time change and the late night at the music festival the night before, so our friends had to push us along a little to get to Les Halles before closing.

We entered the market building and witnessed the flurry of activity of merchants selling their wares and shoppers scooting around to fulfill their grocery lists before closing. During their year living in Avignon, our friends had met many of the merchants and became friendly with those that they frequented the most. Such is life -you get good service or realize where the best product is, and you return. Friendships begin.

Many of the merchants spoke a little English, and also appreciated their attempts to speak French, so our friends had made friends with the cheese mongers, the produce family, and the meat sellers through weekly banter and commerce. In French markets, you grab a basket and then fill it with your produce. It is then weighed and totaled for you.

Still in a haze, Scott and I were led around the market to the various stalls, and then just as quickly, the shopping was done and our dinner was bought. Ok, we were done; time for a drink!?
Throughout Avignon are les places, or town squares. Almost year round there are tables and chairs set up outside of bistros and restaurants within these town squares where there is no vehicle traffic. People can sit, have a drink and watch the world go by. Which is exactly what we did on our first afternoon in Avignon.

Afterwards, our family decided to take a little survey of the town via the touristy tram tour and see some of the highlights of Avignon while our friends returned home. The Palais de Papes (the palace of the Pope) is a gorgeous building in the centre of town, built first as a respite from the Vatican, and then became home to 6 popes during the 1300’s and was built upon and expanded.
After the tour, we were treated to our first home-cooked meal in France (although it was 35 degrees outside, so cold salads from our market trip were lovingly prepared and it was an ideal dinner). And some rosé pour les adultes, s’il vous plâit!